A Heart for Africa

Aubrey Barton first discovered her heart’s calling to serve as a missionary as a teenager. 

A member of Grace Point for about seventeen years, she went on her first mission trip when she was 13, accompanying her family and a church team to work in villages in Zambia. 

“This was my first eye-opening experience to mission work. It shifted my perspective and broadened my view of God and Kingdom work.,” Aubrey says. “The seed was planted, and I just kept thinking about it.”

The next year she went on a mission trip to Brazil with her parents. And in 2008, at the age of 15, she went to Mali for the first time with her mom. 

“I fell in love with the culture and the people,” she say. “That was a turning point for me, because after that trip I knew God was specifically calling me to go to Mali.”

Over the next few years, she would take six more short-term trips to Mali with Grace Point. She did this while graduating high school and then while pursuing her bachelor’s degree in nursing from the University of Arkansas. She believed her nursing degree would give her a platform to use when she entered full-time ministry work. 

Each year that she visited Mali, she visited the same village that Grace Point had been pouring into, building relationships and learning more and more about the country, the culture and the people. 

After graduating with her nursing degree in December of 2013, Aubrey spent four months in Mali on her own, working in a local Christian hospital in the labor and delivery department, working in local villages through outreach clinics, and working as a volunteer with other missionary and service projects.

At graduation and while in Africa, Aubrey had been engaged to be married. But after returning home culture shock and a lack of knowing exactly what lay in her future prompted her to postpone the wedding. After six months of reflection the couple decided God was calling them to two different directions, him to local ministry and her back to Africa. 

Aubrey worked for a year as a nurse and then started the Journeyman program with International Mission Board, a two-year commitment to missionary work abroad. She spent two months training in Richmond, Va., studying not only Gospel sharing, but also the culture, language and other practical aspects of living in Africa. She spent a week specifically in New York ministering in Harlem with the West African immigrants. 

“It was a different mindset for long-term missionary work,” she says. While she had gotten by with the help of translators in previous trips, this time she had to learn the language of the Bambara people group, the trade language in Mali that would help her communicate with about 80 percent of the population. 

During her two years living as a full-time missionary in Mali, Aubrey says the country became like a second home to her and the people like a second family.

She says there were many times when she saw God clearly working and moving around her. But one story she particularly likes to tell is about a time near the end of her two-year stay when she was preparing to return to the United States.  She says it was a down time or a “pit” for her. She was in the depressing season of saying goodbyes. 

Along with this period of time being very emotional for her, she also was also shouldering more stress at work as she was in charge of transporting and aiding four volunteer students. And on top of all this, she was having some tension with her supervisor. 

She says during this time she stayed obedient in what she was called to do, but the time was not joyful for her. 

On this particularly occasion, she was transporting her team members from one village to another, and even though they had a guide, they became completely lost. This setback added to her frustration and aided her bad mood. 

But then the group happened across a worker in a field and she sent one of the volunteers to ask him for directions. When the volunteer returned, he informed the group that the worker wanted to be a follower of Jesus. 

“Amazed, I turned the truck off and we went to talk to the guy,” Aubrey says. The worker had heard about the short-term missionary teams who had been faithful in visiting one of his neighbor villages. He had seen their love and how they cared for people. And he had decided he wanted what they had.

“We shared the good news to him and he confirmed Christ as his Savior,” Aubrey says. At the same time another man came up and listened to the conversation before deciding he, too, wanted to be saved. 

“It was a point of huge encouragement to me,” Aubrey says. “I was not in a good place emotionally or spiritually. God used me in that moment.  Even with my poor attitude, he was going to use me to make his plans happen.”

She said that moment helped her remember why she was in Africa. 

“It can happen just like that. You hit a wall, and get so discouraged. But one of the big lessons I learned is that no matter how many times you hit that wall, God doesn’t let your efforts go in vain.”

She says many times God has revealed to her that people were listening when she didn’t know they were listening and that, even if people were not always coming forward to be saved, the seeds of the Gospel were always being planted. 

Aubrey finished her commitment with the IMB and returned home to the U.S. about 18 months ago. She says the culture shock upon returning was 10 times worse than any other trip. 

“When I was coming home, to me it felt like I was leaving everything I knew behind, my daily routine and my life for two years.”

She says her relationships at Grace Point and her family have been her main support in transitioning back to living in the U.S. She is currently working as a nurse at Washington Regional Medical Center. 

But she has felt the call on her heart to return to Mali, and is in the early stages of seeing how that calling will play out this time. She is returning for three weeks to visit friends in Africa and will possibly interview for a nursing job in the capital city of Bamako. She believes this time she is being called to work as a nurse and live missionally through her vocation and volunteer efforts.

She is already aware of two couples from Bentonville who have recently moved to Bamako, and she feels she could help with their ministry and help them in their transition to the country. 

Whatever God has planned for her future, Aubrey feels certain Mali will be a part of it.

She says its difficult to put into words what it is that she loves about Africa so much. But one of her favorite things about being there is worshipping together with other believers.

“There are different languages, different people groups, different cultures, all crying out to God in song and in prayer as one unified body of believers. It is a beautiful picture to me of what heaven will be like someday.” 

“It all comes down to obedience. God has been teaching me over and over that what He requires of me is obedience. Regardless of where I am or what I’m doing, regardless of the bad mood I’m in or the frustrations of life, as long as I remain obedient to Hime, He sustains me. He amazes me and he does immeasurably more than anything I could ask or imagine.”

“God is calling all nations to Himself, and for many of these people, they live and die without a chance to even hear about the Good News. I am reminded of Romans 10: ‘Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.’ How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in? And how can they believe in the one of whom they have not heard? And how can they hear without someone preaching to them? And how can anyone preach unless they are sent? As it is written: ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news!’”

“He has blessed me with an opportunity to share His love with others, and I have a responsibility to live in obedience to Him.”